Loyalty Signaling, Bureaucratic Compliance, and Variation in State Repression in Authoritarian Regimes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7728087 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jingyuan Qian (0000-0001-8871-6393), Steve Bai |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 423-447 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4159 • E-ISSN: 2151-6227 |
| Publisher | Comparative Politics CUNY (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5129/001041524x17069685289697 |
| OpenAlex | W4392112961 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 15 |
In autocracies, why are certain bureaucrats more heavy-handed in their use of force than others during repression? In this article, we propose an incentive-compatible theory that explains the uneven compliance of bureaucrats in repressive campaigns. We argue that bureaucrats from less trusted backgrounds tend to implement repressive tasks more fervently to credibly display loyalty and bolster their career prospects. We provide evidence for our theory using China’s Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957‐1959), a repressive campaign launched by Mao Zedong against alleged critics of his rule. We find that officials who were former undercover partisans, a faction considered untrustworthy by Mao, tended to prosecute more “rightists” in their jurisdictions and imposed harsher penalties on them. This study contributes to the literature by revealing the motivations of coercive agents
Authoritarianism · Bureaucracy · Compliance (psychology · Democracy · Loyalty · Political science · Psychological repression · State (computer science · Computer Science · Corruption and Economic Development · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology
Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries
The Witch-Hunting Vanguard
A Tragedy of the Nomenklatura ? Career incentives, political loyalty and political radicalism during China's Great Leap Forward
Securitizing Xinjiang
The Agency Problem Underlying Repression
Nauseating” Displays of Loyalty
Elite Cleavage and the Rise of Capitalism under Authoritarianism
Subnational State Capacity and the Repression of Protest
Preemptive Repression
Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East
Multi-Dimensional Threat Perception and State Repression
The Political Legacy of Violence During China's Cultural Revolution
State Repression and Political Order
The Tragedy of theNomenklatura
Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War
| Citations per year | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |